Study Gittin folio 36B with parallel Hebrew-English text, traditional commentary, and modern study tools. Free access to Babylonian Talmud online.
And the rabbis instituted that despite this, the Sabbatical Year still will abrogate debt in the present, in remembrance of the Torah-mandated Sabbatical Year. Hillel saw that the people of the nation refrained from lending to each other so he arose and instituted the prosbol. According to this exp
According to this explanation, the rabbis instituted that even in the present the Sabbatical Year would bring a cancellation of debt, despite the fact that by Torah law the debt still stands. The Talmud asks: But is there anything like this, where by Torah law the Sabbatical Year does not cancel the
Abaye says: This is not actual theft; it is an instruction to sit passively and not do anything. The rabbis have the authority to instruct one to passively violate a Torah law, so long as no action is taken. Rava says: The rabbis are able to institute this ordinance because property declared owner
R' Eliezer said: The halakha that property declared ownerless by the court is ownerless is derived from here: The verse states: “These are the inheritances, which Elazar the priest, and Joshua the son of Nun, and the heads of the fathers’ houses of the tribes of the children of Israel distributed
§ A dilemma was raised before the rabbis: When Hillel instituted the prosbol, was it for his generation alone that he instituted it, and the custom developed to continue using it, or did he perhaps institute it also for all generations?